Sharon Stone Says She Was Misled About Infamous ‘Basic Instinct’ Nude Scene
Sharon Stone has never been one to mince words about her dicier experiences in Hollywood. Her upcoming memoir, “The Beauty of Living Twice,” publishing on March 30, promises to be a juicy a tell-all, and Vanity Fair has an exclusive excerpt from the book, in which Stone talks about her experience making Paul Verhoeven‘s psychosexual thriller “Basic Instinct.” It’s probably best known for a brief full-frontal nude scene featuring Stone uncrossing her legs, but in the memoir, she said she was misled about what the scene was actually going to be. She said she didn’t know her genitals were exposed in the movie until a screening filled with agents and lawyers.
“That was how I saw my vagina-shot for the first time, long after I’d been told, ‘We can’t see anything — I just need you to remove your panties, as the white is reflecting the light, so we know you have panties on,’” Stone writes. “Now, here is the issue. It didn’t matter anymore. It was me and my parts up there. I had decisions to make.”
Stone also recalled confronting Verhoeven about the scene afterward. “I went to the projection booth, slapped Paul across the face, left, went to my car, and called my lawyer, Marty Singer. Marty told me that they could not release this film as it was. That I could get an injunction. First, at that time, this would give the film an X rating. Remember, this was 1992, not now, when we see erect penises on Netflix. And, Marty said, per the Screen Actors Guild, my union, it wasn’t legal to shoot up my dress in this fashion. Whew, I thought.”
She added, “Well, that was my first thought. Then I thought some more. What if I were the director? What if I had gotten that shot? What if I had gotten it on purpose? Or by accident? What if it just existed? That was a lot to think about. I knew what film I was doing. For heaven’s sake, I fought for that part, and all that time, only this director had stood up for me.”
In the excerpt, Stone also alleged that a male producer once tried to convince her to have sex with her co-star, though she didn’t name either man. “He explained to me why I should fuck my costar so that we could have onscreen chemistry. Why, in his day, he made love to Ava Gardner onscreen and it was so sensational! Now just the creepy thought of him in the same room with Ava Gardner gave me pause. Then I realized that she also had to put up with him and pretend that he was in any way interesting,” Stone wrote.
She added,” I’ve had other producers on other films just come to my trailer and ask, ‘So, are you going to fuck him, or aren’t you? … You know it would go better if you did.’ I take my time and explain that I am like the nice girl they grew up with, and get them to recall that girl’s name. This leaves us all with a little bit of our dignity.”
